WILLIAM PETER BLATTY- RIP

GEORGE NAPOLITANO VIA GETTY IMAGES

William Peter Blatty attends the special screening of “The Exorcist Extended Director’s Cut” at Il Gattopardo on Sept. 29, 2010, in New York City.

William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist and won an Oscar for the screenplay adaptation of the horror story, has died. He was 89. 

William Friedkin, who directed the film version of “The Exorcist” in 1973, announced the author’s death on Twitter Friday.

Blatty’s chilling story of a Catholic priest attempting to rid a young girl of a demonic spirit was a best-seller after his earlier novels, mostly comedic, had failed to reach a wide audience, according to The Guardian.

Set in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, “The Exorcist” captivated readers with the increasingly strange and unsettling occurrences happening around the main character, Regan MacNeil, and her family. 

In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2011 after releasing a revised version of his breakthrough work, Blatty discussed the novel’s appeal. 

“Obviously, of course, a popular novel has to be a page-turning read. Second, everyone likes a good scare, so long as we know we’re not really threatened,” Blatty said via email.”And third - and most importantly, I think - because this novel is an affirmation that there is a final justice in the universe; that man is something more than a neuron net; that there is a high degree of probability - let’s not beat around the bush – that there is an intelligence, a creator whom C.S. Lewis famously alluded to as “the love that made the worlds.”

The misperception that the events in the book, like scenes where Regan’s head spun around, were based on a true story possibly also increased sales, Blatty said to HuffPost. 

The film, starring Linda Blair as Regan, was also a smash hit and cultural phenomenon when it was released in 1973. It was so popular that fans waited in lines stretching for blocks to get tickets, and some even went to the extreme method of using battering rams to get into theaters.

The movie netted an Oscar for Blatty in 1974 his screenplay, and it became the first horror film nominated in the best picture category, according to Variety.

READ MORE-